Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1887-11-27
FROM THE ROCK.
RELEASING PURE WATERS FROM THEIR
HIDING-pLACEs.
Springs and Streams that are Held In
Rsvsrenoe-Features OF the Cele-
brAted Bolan Pass.


imagination than that IN which Moses Is
recorded as having smitten the rock in
/ Horeb, and the waters gushed out TO
give drink to the lsraeltes who were re-
preaching their leader for bringing them
and their families and their fiocks mp
from Egypt to perish with thirst in the
| desert. Great and little artists have
striven TO depict that scene, and shall
low skeptics have pointed scornfully to
| il as a sheer morsel of romance. Yet
every engineer knows-oiten to his cost
/ that nothing is more common in exca-
vations than for blast or pick to re-
move just she'll of stone and then
release waters that have been imme-
morally imprisoned in the living
rock, and whose very existence is wholly
unsupported. Few people who have
ever been in the country, even though
they have passed the greater part of their
lives in populous cities pent, have failed
| to notice water trickling or running from
a tiny fissure in some preciplce or wall
! of rock. But it is not often that this is
seen upon a large scale. Commonly in
Vulnerable rills have to unite to form n
rivulet yet sometimes the river is born
/ all at once as at the foot of a glacier, like
| the Black Lutschen in the Grindelwald
| Valley or the Rhone from the great
Rhone glacier; and in at least three
/ cases i'll Asia where there is no glacier
within scores of miles streams spring
from the face of the rock complete, like
/ Minerva from the brain of Jupiter.
One of these is in Armenia-ten years
[ ago Turkish, now Russian. About six
teen miles southeast of Kars lies the
mountain called variously Alagsdogh and
Aladja Dagh, in either case meaning
/ Gods Hill In ravine at the foot OF 1t,
or rather divided from it by ravine, is
the ancient city of Ami, city Astounding
/ in glorious monuments, too little known,
| Of early Christian architecture. In line
/ drawn from the summit of the mountain
/ to the centre of Ami the gentle slope OF
/ the upland suddenly breaks, as though
at some time there had been a landslip.
/ This slip has left a sheer cliff of black
basaltic rock about40 to 80 feet in height,
and about s feet up from the ground is a
/ horizontal fissure 10 feet in width by one
/ in height. From this fssure there poursan
| endless cataract of exquistely clear,
pure, and exceedingly cold water at the
rate of many thousands of gallons an
hour. There is no trace of a stream,
/ however small, above it on the slope.
1t simply is. Probably it is the outlet
of an underground channel, into which
sOaks through the soil the melting snow
of spring, the rains of summer, lying or
falling upon the height of 5000 feet
above the sea, or 1000 feet above the
plateau from which the hill rises The
stream has worn for itself an oval
basin, wherein grow on that desc
late and almost grass-denuded ac-
cliyity abundance of water-plants, and
in summertime the face Of the
cliff is curtained by delicate flow
ering creepers. On the stems of these,
for many of them are as thick as the
trunks of lusty vines, tiutter countless
strips of rags, white and red and blue,
and often all three mixed, such as one
nav see by "holy we'll in Ireland
votive offerings of the poorest of the poor,
who, having nothing else to give, and
having received, or fancied they re-
ceived, some benefit from the sanctified
waters, leave at least a strip of their gar
ments as record of their recognition and
their gratitude. This water out of the
living rock on Gods Hill is deemed a
sovereign remedy by the people for many
a league around for certain ailments
and it is for that which is the COM
monest of their ills-namely, their per-
sonal filth, from which doubtless many
serious diseases do arise. Nor is the
spring frequented only by the Kurds or
the Turks of the vicinity. 1t is also held
in reverence by the Armenian Christians
of the district. There was to be seen
ten years since hanging from one of the
creepers string of the beads used by
Mussulmans to help them to say their
prayers, or more frequently to keep their
idle fingers occupied, and close beside it
little metal crucifX-a sure sign that
the follower of the camel-driver OF Nee
ca and a disciple of the Carpenter Of
Nazareth had sought aid at the same
spring. and equally deemed that they
had found it.
The Turks are the mostcunning water
engineers in tho world. Straight down
the hill was and probably is to be seen
the channel which the water had made
for itself in the course of ages but the
whole stream had been diverted and
conducted round the shoulder Of many
q spur away for miles to some cultivated
oround further to the north, where it
could either run into the gully of the
Subatan river, and thence to the river
of Kars. and from that to the bridge
summing Araxes," and so TO the Caspian
Sea. or be induced TO spread itself
over the soil and give to the
corn the nourishment which the sparse
earth but scantily afforded. Not a
drop need be wasted when the will of
the petty farmer was so. A flat stone
fitting against a flat stone determined
the destiny of the stream. One could
not help thinking of the text in Deute-
ronomv. where Moses refers to the land :
"Wbere thou sowest thy seed and water
est It with thy foot" In Armenia there
is indeed plenty of water, but the coun-
try is so mountainous that 1t. rapidly
runs away, and thrice blessed Is the
peasant who has above the level of his
Ground perennial fountain which
:. watereth the earth" in the heats of
summer time.
Two thousand miles away lies the
Bolan Pass, famous in Indian military
annals, through which more than once
the tide of invasion has flowed from the
Central Asian steppes to the plains OF
Hindoostan, and twice English armies
have toiled into Afghanistan. The Bolan
everywhere shows traces of being fire.
quently swept by great torrents, yet the
upper third of it Is waterless. The pei
lucid stream which was crossed by the
old road thirty times in the course Of
one DAYS march is so scant some
times that it wholly flows under beds
of shingles, and this point is called
Ab-i.gum-the hiding of the water.
/ II is partly derived from riyulet that
rms INTO it from the westward, and the
exact source OF which no European
knoweth, but which has in its passage
carved most quaint caves and fretted
vaults out OF the base of some lofty
white precipices, and partly from a